Why policies succeed or fail: the importance of 'policy consonance'

This article takes stock of the literature on policy success and policy failure. The huge amount of studies on the subject does not provide a clear and agreed answer to the question: what determines the success or failure of a policy? The paper attempts to answer this question by introducing the analytical scheme of the 'policy pentagram'. The proposed framework conceives of public policies as consisting of five basic components: 1) policy goals; 2) policy instruments; 3) the organizational structure in charge of implementation; 4) the recipients of the policy; 5) policy communication. For a policy to be successful, there must be 'consonance' between its five components. Consonance does not indicate generic compatibility or the absence of contradictory elements: it indicates synergy and a high degree of complementarity between policy components, which thus end up mutually reinforcing each other. To show the practical usefulness of the policy pentagram framework, a concrete example is given: the experience of the Bologna breast milk bank.